1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of security. More specifically, the present invention relates to the provision of a security subsystem having an intelligent direct memory access (DMA) controller in a multi-service system-on-chip to improve operational efficiency.
2. Background Information
Advances in integrated circuit technology have led to the birth and proliferation of a wide variety of integrated circuits, including but not limited to application specific integrated circuits, micro-controllers, digital signal processors, general purpose microprocessors, and network processors. Recent advances have also led to the birth of what's known as “system on a chip” or SOC.
In various SOC applications, such as telecommunications, networking and content handling, it is often necessary to perform security operations of one or more types of security methods. The terms “security operations” and “security methods” as used in the present application include all known security operations/methods, as well as to be discovered security operations/methods that are compatible with the present invention. Examples of known security operations/methods include but are not limited to Data Encryption Standard (DES) methods and operations of all types, Electronic Codebook (ECB), Cipher Block Chaining (CBC), Cipher Feedback (CFB), and so forth, and hashing operations of all types, Message Digest (MD5), Secure HASH Algorithm (SHA-1) and so forth.
Further, the security methods or operations often have to be performed for data of various types, including audio, video and other data, and of various subsystems, such as the subsystem responsible for interfacing the SOC to a network, the subsystem responsible for interfacing the SOC to a telecommunication line and so forth.
Thus, a need exists to provide or support security operations of multiple security methods or operations in an efficient manner.